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Archive for April, 2010

In a conversation with vice president of product marketing Mladen Stojic, here’s what’s new in the ERDAS 2010 10.1 release:

1) new capability called LPS eATE – an enhanced automated terrain extraction tool that automatically extracts very accurate and very dense point clouds from imagery;

2)ERDAS APOLLO software application, ERDAS’ enterprise solution for managing and delivering large quantities of geospatial information, was released a couple of years ago. It works on a server and manages data whether its high volumes of image data, terrain data or vector for customers that have a lot of diverse data. What is new with this release is the Microsoft SQL support (noted below) and ERDAS APOLLO Feature Interoperability. ERDAS APOLLO Feature Interoperability is a new module that provides a DGN Connector to ERDAS APOLLO, enabling direct access to MicroStation’s DGN v7 and v8 format files via web services.

3) ERDAS has an ongoing partnership with Microsoft, which is now also reflected within the APOLLO application. Microsoft has been spending more and more money on its spatial capabilities on its SQL Server platform, so ERDAS is now working and will support the Microsoft SQL Server database in ERDAS APOLLO applications

4) Defense market, homeland security and intelligence are interested in the new “add-on” to ERDAS’ existing Stereo Analyst product. StereoAnalyst for ArcGIS Extension that ERDAS has built to serve Stereo Analyst customers who need additional Defense formats in the ArcGIS environment. This product collects native 3D data directly at a much greater accuracy rate with direct sensor model support for those classified sources on the ArcGIS platform.

5)According to Stojic,

Pixel-wise data extracted with LPS eATE. Point cloud, 3D, and cross sectional views of the surface are shown in Fugro Viewer.

ERDAS has been building high performance server systems and with this 10.1 release they have done even more to produce what they say is the fastest server in the market for serving geographic data and information.

A University of New South Wales professor said surveyors and GIS professionals are sorely needed in the rural areas. Fewer locals are taking courses or returning from college to their country roots to work in those areas.

“Many incidents (such as the events of 9/11 and the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire that killed six firefighters) have highlighted the need for an accountability system to accurately locate, track, monitor, and visualize the locations of responders on a geospatial map. This will allow incident commanders and tactical-decision makers to virtually observe personnel movements in real time to avoid loss of life.”

This article talks about the “development of the geospatial location accountability and navigation system for emergency responders (GLANSER). The system is a ‘cocktail solution’ in which several components have been fused together to provide an estimate of the user’s location, whether inside or outside a building. We have combined GPS, IMU, ultrawide-band ranging radio, Doppler radar, as well as a magnetometer, compass, pedometer, and altimeter, to fit into a 2×4×6in3 wearable electronic unit. This combination of sensors works in harmony so that when GPS is not available, or in periods of suboptimal RF ranging, other signals are exploited”

At AU it appeared that geospatial had an uncertain future at Autodesk. Senior director, Infrastructure Modeling Product Line Paul McRoberts stated at Autodesk’s AEC Technology Day this week that geospatial is the underlying component for all of Autodesk products. The FDO platform is extensible open source software that can be noted in transportation, water and waste water, land development, power and energy.

McRoberts said that 24% of the gross revenue collected by AEC firms is for planning, according to an American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) study. It might appear that the role of geospatial at Autodesk is visual in nature: modeling and visualization for water, transportation, energy and water and wastewater, where getting public approval is primary to getting projects off the ground. What is needed here is a way to show a workflow including location and geospatial data. The technologies spoken most about – 3ds Max for visualization and Dynamite VSP Exporter are for showing how problems can be solved, interoperability, and being able to migrate information to others.

The laser scanning environment and lidar data play a part in this. McRoberts said that surveying may become a thing of the past. With the need in many places for ground truth data, particularly in areas that aren’t readily accessible with laser scanning equipment or lidar, I think it may be a long time before this is realized.

“Digital cities,” a hot buzz term of a year or two ago, will now go by the name “sustainable cities” as one part of a greater vision including extension of assets such as tranmission lines into rural communities. It is part of the scope of LandXplorer, in its quest to address large scale projects and visualization. McRoberts said LandXplorer holds a GIS layer underneath that contains real data.